Chapter Two: Daley Defects

The Trick is Poorly Motivated

Like many magic tricks, “The Last Trick of Dr. Jacob Daley” suffers from poor motivation. Why do we use four Aces when only two are involved in the action? Unless we announce ahead of time what is going to happen, our audience might wonder why we're using the red Aces at all. And if we did tell everyone what was going to happen, it would ruin the surprise element of the trick. So, no, we don't want to do that.

Poor motivation is usually a sign that the internal logic of the trick is faulty. I touched on this weakness above when I mentioned a way to improve the internal logic of Daley's trick by mixing the position of the two black Aces before the reveal. Doing this makes locating the Ace of Spades more challenging, thus better justifying the somewhat silly question (“Where is the Ace of Spades?”). This approach improves the presentation but still doesn't help explain why the two red Aces are being used.

We can justify why we're only using the black Aces by further developing this “Chase the Ace” presentation. Simply explain that you're using two Aces, to begin with, to make the game “easier to play.” After all, your volunteer has never played this game before, so using all four Aces would be unfair—problem solved! 

We've justified the use of all four Aces and managed not to spoil the surprise ending. You could even develop a second phase to Daley's Last Trick, which involved all four Aces to add credence to this premise (something we'll look at later in this book).